


Past tense

by haruaki_ (ee_ee)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love, no happy ending for levi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29612217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ee_ee/pseuds/haruaki_
Summary: He didn't love you back... right?
Relationships: Akashi Seijuurou/Reader, Levi Ackerman/Petra Ral, Levi Ackerman/Reader
Kudos: 16





	Past tense

**Author's Note:**

> Fem!Reader.

"I love you, Levi. " you said as you looked at him dead in the eye, as an attempt to penetrate his deeply buried heart once more.

You just needed him to know the depth of your words. Those 3 agonizing words that were full of nothing but desperation and longing for the man you achingly enamoured for, but that's vaguely what one type of love is, isn't it?

Painful, but much like a parasite, it's impossible when you try to detach yourself from it without help.

Levi though on the other hand had a slightly different outtake on this.

He felt as if he could soar the endless blue skies without even any help from the limited technology available, but at the same time, he felt as if he was free falling — like that weird falling-from-a-high-place dream that we've all experienced before. He also — oddly — wanted to explode with joy so much that he actually had to hold back the urge to smile and run around like a gleeful child who had just gotten many presents on Christmas Day, which confused him to the utmost since this was the first time he's had this much amount of joy when you professed your love for him to him.

It wasn't that he didn't love you back though, it was just that he didn't love you back that way. At least that's what he has always told himself — like right now.

Ludicrous is what that is, but it wasn't as if he could help it. It was how he was built to deal with things he couldn't understand completely, by pushing it away and using ridiculous reasons that contradict the real ones.

Awkward — that was how you felt because of how he was just staring at you but at the same time, into blankness as if he just went into a deep and probably colorful trance. You should've gotten used to this though because this was exactly was how it went down when you first confessed to him and along with all the other times too, but you never did and you're sure you never will.

Who ever does?

Not you, or Levi.

He should've used the time in between to create a speech or a point system on the numerous times that he had rejected your seemingly endless pit of love for him — but he didn't. It seemed cruel even for Levi, although he never was as cruel as people took his scary face for and you knew because that was the gun-shot point of your love for said man ; gun-shot point being the gun shot at the beginning of races that indicated 'get up and run' for the competing runners.

Funny how in other ways, you also always feel as if a gun had been shot into your heart every time he said no to loving you, no to being in a relationship with you and no to accepting _you_...but this time, you decided it would be different.

You had the power to, because it was your heart and your feelings and this time, you were going to protect it — protect it from him.

Getting over the thick awkwardness hanging in the air again, you spoke up, awaking him from the confusing thoughts his heart was overriding his logical brain.

"No actually, to be more precise — I loved you. I just wanted to let you know this one last time. "

Soft as cotton your voice was as you told him while tucking a group of hair—that escaped from the clutches of the back of your ear — back from where it came from.

Never did he realize how absolutely stunning you looked while doing that, so much that he had to bite down on the inside of his right cheek in order to direct the blood flow that was headed for his cheeks to the insides of it.

Well, maybe he did, but just never really acknowledged it.

"What? " Levi manages to ask without clawing at his chest but instead, discretely on his own palm.

He wanted to cry.

He wanted scream.

He wanted to just shut the whole world out and just lock himself in his closet so that he could hypnotize himself to forget what he had just heard, but he can't and that's just life.

Some people have to deal with a chronic disease and learn to live with it, while some people have to deal with living an unfulfilled life, but some people have to live with an oblivious mind and that's what Levi has to deal with. What's even worse is that even when the key to his happiness, even when you're willing to spend your entire life with him, he wouldn't ever be able to see it because he just can't.

Poor guy, isn't he?

To have to the answer to his heart being in front of him, professing endless amount of love to him, always being there for him, willing to die for him — he still said no.

A part of him always did wondered though and had wanted to say yes, but the doubt of death and loss of you always trumped your love because to him, it would've been better to not have loved you, than to have loved and lost you.

"I handed the painting to Petra already so no worries. Oh, and Levi...thank you, because now I can finally move on. " you informed him with a genuine smile to which he burned into the deepest part of his brain.

A smile so real, so genuine and so bright that it could even bring light to the blind.

It felt good.

It felt really good to have your smile back. You wondered though, how could you have gone so long without it?

But you knew.

You always knew because they were always thrusted into your view whether you wanted it or not — and you never did.

I mean, who wants to see the man they love be all happy with a woman they're going to start a family with who's not themselves? Masochists, but even they wouldn't be able to handle such emotional torture.

Being a sadist, one would put their masochistic love interest through pain, but even the most twisted sadist wouldn't do that. They wouldn't impregnate another woman just to hear the withering sobs of their true love, they wouldn't reject the feelings of their loved one ( they would accept it and use it to ruin you into the depths of them ), and they definitely wouldn't have asked them to paint a portrait of their other love — which is what Levi did exactly, but it's fine because it's all in the past now.

Just like your patient and enduring love for Levi Ackerman.

Turning around, you stole one last glance at the man you'd never look at the same way ever again, and walked away to meet your new flame half way down the corridor — Lieutenant Akashi Seijuurou.

The man who made your suffering stop.

The man who flushed the parasites out of your system.

_The man who loved you back._

He hated it though.

The liberation portrayed in your body language, the loveless aura emitting from you when you were with him, and most of all, that smile. The same smile that just told him he fucked up big time, the smile that indicated the end of your agonising love for him, the smile that would never be the same for him ever again because it meant change and Levi _hated_ change.

Especially this one.

Clutching at his pristine white pants, he could care less about his other hand that was crushing a very important document because he loathed at what he saw next.

His comrade's arm over your waist as if he was telling everyone to back off because you were now officially his and only his, the way he kissed your forehead so gently that Levi could basically spot the ( cute ) pink blush slathered over your cheeks from miles away, and he especially detested the way you looked at Akashi.

He despised it and he could feel it — the crushing hold on his heart and soul.

_That was how she looked at me._

He wanted that back.

He craved that look...but how could he think so selfishly, when he had Petra?

He loved her so very much, and yet...here he is, experiencing perplexing feelings towards his irreplaceable person moving on from him to his literal red-headed friend.

Had he made yet another mistake that he might regret?

\------

Yes, he had.

The probability of it was high and it came true.

All of this could've been avoided though if he had just opened his mind to you — to your love — the second he saw you. If he had only just opened his heart for you and accepted the obvious feelings he held for you, he could've avoided this bottomless pit of heartbreak. Maybe then, he could've been the one receiving the bride instead of giving her away.

But, nothing could be done now unless he invents a time machine, which is highly unlikely.

Levi Ackerman lost it and there was nothing he could do to obtain them back it.

He lost his chance.

He lost his future.

He lost his happiness and his will all in the span of 3 tortuously heartbreaking years.

What about Petra?

Well, turns out the baby she was carrying belonged to one of his friends that she shacked up with. Why though? Why did she do such an atrocity? Because she knew he loved you but she used the baby to keep him in check.

Cruel, but so is karma when it teams up with bad luck.

Although, that didn't really matter anymore seeing how he finally conceded his deep love for his best friend and not the strawberry blonde — but what does that change?

Nothing, because he didn't want to ruin your happiness yet again. He didn't want to bring sadness, complications and anger to your kind being again.

He didn't want you to suffer because of him again.

This was because he could see the immense amount of love you felt for Akashi Seijuuro. A love even stronger than what your felt for Levi Ackerman.

A second love.

Something that a first love could never compete with because that position signified hope — something Levi always deprived you of.

So now, as he sits alone in his office, he wished for the latter — 'it's better to not have loved you, than have loved and lost you.' — because then, he could've at least died knowing what heaven was.

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted in 2015 on Wattpad (@haruaki_).
> 
> P. S. I don't write for Levi or like this anymore! And check out my main [ee_ee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ee_ee/pseuds/ee_ee) for more content!


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